Wednesday, April 18, 2012

How Is Your Soul Today? Mine Is Grateful

How is your soul today?

Mine in grateful, to a whole lot of people. Trent and I are sitting at Starbucks for a while this morning. He's doing his Wednesday morning push through the Old Testament and I'm enjoying a white chocolate mocha and catching up on some blogging and maybe reading.

TAX SEASON IS OVER!!!! I made it. I am off today and I get to spend it with my wonderful husband and later this evening, with our wonderful youth. I have missed them.

Anyway, who am I grateful to? Here's my list.

My Sunday school teacher, Tony

I am looooooving my Sunday school class at church right now. Our teacher's name is Tony and he is doing a great job teaching, leading, getting us into the Scripture, having us traipse around in our Bibles and learn and grow. I have learned so much from the class so far and really appreciate his leadership. Plus I just love Tony. Maybe because he is a Tony and my dad is a Tony. Maybe because actually he is Anthony Wayne and my dad is Anthony Wayne. Maybe because he is married to a Jean and my dad is married to a Jean. Maybe because they have a daughter named Ann and I am a daughter named Anna. Tony is a wonderful, Godly man and my soul is grateful for him.

Christ, my risen savior

I'm not really sure what to put here other than the fact that through this Easter season I have been in awe of the sacrifice that Christ made for all of us. To give your own life for others? Could I do that for someone else?? Crazy awesome.

And now for the people who have been a support team for me during this tax season, whether they realize it or not.

Kind clients

In any line of work, you'll have nice clients and not so nice clients. In general, our clients are pretty cool, but I encountered a few this season that not only made my work for them easier, but they also blessed me personally with encouragement. One lady ended up with some pretty bummer situations in her tax return this year, but she showed so much positive heart throughout it and expressed so much encouragement to me, that it was a total pleasure to work on her stuff and talk to her. She called me this past Sunday afternoon and when I answered she said "Oh Anna, I thought you would probably be at the office, but I was secretly hoping you wouldn't answer so I could think you were at home relaxing." Her final email to me regarding her return being wrapped up ended with "COME ON TUESDAY NIGHT!" Another client said in an email as I was wrapping up their extension estimate "We are asking the Lord to give you strength over the next few days." Good people, who I have never actually met, who have no idea how much they encouraged me.

My youth girls

Trent communicated to the youth over the last few weeks that I was working a lot and needed prayer. I got several sweet texts from my girls checking in with me, seeing how I was doing, saying they missed me. One texted "How are the taxes?" Another said "Will you be at youth next Wednesday or are you going to be resting?" When I said I would be there for sure, the response was "Yay!! We get our Anna back!" Another made me cry by texting "You, miss, are in my prayers! I have no clue how you do it! I'd be sleeping at my desk everyday!" I love these girls. I'm SO excited that I'll have more time again to hang out with them.

My amazing husband

You knew Trent would be in this list. Duh. He is my ultimate helper. He encourages me regularly, he took care of me, he took care of our life while I worked so much. He put up with my little tax season meltdowns and my big tax season meltdowns, he regularly asked me how my workload was, he totally cleaned the whole house last Monday, he brought me many vanilla lattes throughout the season. I don't think I could do tax seasons without him by my side. I'm also super grateful for the fact that he is such a handy man fix it guy. He recently fixed our dripping shower, fixed our hall toilet that wouldn't stop running, and, get this, blew in new insulation into our entire attic, with the help of Gary from our church, who I am also grateful to. Who out there, if you wanted to re-insulate your attic, would tackle it yourself? Maybe more that I think. But I'm just super grateful that my husband can do these things and save us tons of money in the process by not having to hire people. Our insulation job was about $500 cheaper because Trent tackled it himself. Yesss.

So I'm done with tax season. Hip Hip Hurray! Trent and I are going to bop around town this morning, then I'll probably do some shopping while he's at work this afternoon or read or relax in the youth room. Then I get to see our kids tonight! It's good to be done.